Lowery Stokes Sims is specialist in modern and contemporary art. She received her B.A. in art history from Queens College of the City University of New York; her M.A. in art history from
Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in art history from the Graduate School of the City
University of New York. Her dissertation, Wifredo Lam and the International Avant-Garde,
1923–1992, was published by the University of Texas Press in 2002.
Sims has had a long-time commitment to working with and writing about modern contemporary art and artists. Since the 1970s she has fostered diversification and opportunity for artists
having been a witness to and participant in the black arts movement, the feminist art movement and the politics of postmodernism and beyond. Sims served on the education and curatorial staff of The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1972-1999 and then as executive director, president and adjunct curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem from 2000-2007 and retired in
2015 as Curator Emerita from the Museum of Arts and Design. As an independent curator and
art historian she has been involved in projects with the Caribbean Cultural Center, the
Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles; Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, N.J.; the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Center for Art, Design&Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Sims has served as A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University (2005-2010); as Visiting Professor at Queens College and Hunter College in New York City (2005, 2006); as a fellow at the Clark Art Institute and Visiting Scholar at the University of Minnesota (2007). She was Visiting Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (2018-2020) and the 2021-
22 Kress-Beinecke Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. She has served as a visiting critic and lecturer at Alfred
University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Hawaii among others. In 1991, she received the Frank Jewett Mather Award from the Colleg Art Association for distinction in art criticism and in 2022 she was elected an honorary fellow by the American Craft Council. Sims was also a member of the selection jury for the World Trade Center memorial in 2003-2004.
⟣ Arts Writing / Writing about Art Fall 2024 Course Oct 11-Dec 13